


Winds of Change

by Moonrose91



Series: The Ties That Bind [10]
Category: A-Team (2010), Marvel, Marvel (Movies)
Genre: ...it has plot relevence, Angst, F/M, Gen, I'll stop using the tags to talk now, I'm Gonna Sing the Angst Song Now!!!!, Omitting age there isn't a bad thing he does, Underage Character, Underage tag for that, Well - Freeform, depending on your point of view, he just doesn't drink or have sex, he probably does something worse, or better, so it counts, the title was almost 'the angst part', there is that one thing, well that and he's not 18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:12:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonrose91/pseuds/Moonrose91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are." - Arthur Golden</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Face

Templeton Peck, named for the rat in Charlotte’s Web and the fact that, when he had been left at the orphanage he had given a ‘peck kiss’ on the cheek to the nun in charge. He doesn’t remember and they said he didn’t speak, not for a long time, and there had been note.

He had been left, abandoned and alone at the church run orphanage, at the age of two (he had held up his fingers, apparently) and that was that.

He spent fourteen years there, looking older then he was, expected to act a certain way and be a certain person.

He wonders what it says about him that he knows who to talk to, and where, to get things for the orphanage. Can sweet talk his way out of anything, twisting his words and his face as easily as coaxing a friendly dog to eat from your hand.

To Templeton, this spoke of the world he was born to work in, but it wasn’t enough.

Yes, he could go far, fly far, with his twisting, dancing words, his easy smile, and his good looks. Could route out the worst of the underworld and take their place, but it wasn’t enough.

It was never enough, because no matter how much good he did, no matter how much he twisted, turned and fought his way through, he always felt like something was missing.

That there was something just beyond his reach.

Templeton was intelligent and almost done with high school, when tragedy struck his world.

The orphanage he lived at lost funding.

The kids were going to be moved either to foster homes (where the good were scattered about like dandelion seeds, but without the strength to root) or to another orphanage and everything Templeton knew was going to end.

The nuns and Father Murphy…everyone would be gone.

And Templeton realized there was only one place for him to go.

He always knew where to look.

He always knew what to trade.

And he _always_ made sure that he got the best.

The fake ID held up; 16 year old Templeton Peck was in the U.S. Army.

He wrote to Father Murphy, telling him where he had gone, in a way.

And that was it.

He shipped out after graduation with no one, in the Army, wiser.

It helped to have friends in the right places.

And with that, he was just another face in many.

Templeton (later ‘Faceman’) Peck was just another face in many, though admittedly a pretty one.

He remained so until John “Hannibal” Smith walked into his life and decided that he was more.


	2. A Target

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has outright statement of child abuse, as well as spousal abuse.
> 
> Because this is Clint's chapter.
> 
> And we all know his childhood sucked.
> 
> I don't know much from the circus, except that his teacher, 'Trickmaster' I believe, also betrayed him, but he seems to have had a better life while in the circus.
> 
> His childhood was still horrible.
> 
> And he saw his mother get hit, so...that's all my warning.

Clint Barton remembers his father.

He would have to have had serious brain damage not to.

He remembers the way his father always stank of booze and how the belt had cut into his back with each strike.

He remembered his father very well, more by how his father’s emotions tasted in his mouth and stung his eyes then anything else, but he had to think, and think hard, on his mother, whose eyes were vacant (were they Barney’s green or his blue-grey?) and who never cried, not even when their father had cracked her in the head so hard she began to bleed.

About how, all the times he knew her and lived in Hell on Earth, always being abused and battered, not just by his father’s hands but the hatred and anger and _depression_ that clung to the very walls, that his mother was just prism that the emotions seemed to filter through, making them all a thousand times worse.

He remembers that it was the one time his father had shown a conscious.

That that was why their father had driven off and they got into that accident, drunken though it was, killing them both eventually.

And that had left Clint and his older brother, by two years, Barney, alone.

There was no one to take them in. No kindly grandparents or strict but willing to take them in aunts or uncles.

They didn’t even have a distant cousin twice removed that would take them in.

It had just been the four of them and then just the two of them.

So, when Barney had proposed running away to the circus when Clint was nine and he was eleven at the orphanage one night, Clint had agreed.

Because family stayed together best they could.

So he hadn’t been sure what to think when he woke up one morning, seven years later, to find Barney gone.

Barney had left _him_.

No note, no good-bye.

Barney, and his clothes, and his identification were all gone.

Clint stared at the space Barney once occupied and tried to will Barney back, but it didn’t work.

That wasn’t how Clint worked and his eyes narrowed.

Fine.

He didn’t need anyone anyway.

Clint gathered up his bow and his quiver of arrows and worked on his act until his arms ached so much that it hurt to pull the arrow back anymore.

His chest still felt like someone had ripped out his heart though.

Family was supposed to stick together, but then again, no Barton liked doing what they were _supposed_ to do.


	3. A Tie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This...this is a really sad chapter.

Phil frowned at his watch, noting that it was almost an hour after the appointed time they had agreed to meet at the park.

Sarah was never late.

“Higher, Daddy, higher!” Darcy squealed and Phil gave her a look, both Darcy and Phil dressed in matching jeans and Captain America t-shirts because Sarah had deemed it ‘cute and adorable’.

“What do you say?” he stated.

“Please, Daddy, please, higher?” she questioned.

His response was, when she was at the high point of her back swing, to push as hard as he could and send her flying forward and, as predicted, higher, earning a loud shout of laughter that seemed to echo through the sky.

They stayed another half an hour before Phil sighed and shook his head. “Come on baby girl. Time for us to go home,” he stated.

“I thought we were meeting Mommy?” the four year old stated and Phil nodded with another frown.

Her head twitched to the side, quickly assessing his concern, and slight irritation, at the lateness caused by her mommy.

“Maybe she got caught in traffic or had to head home. She might have had a headache too. Either way, waiting at home might be preferable, right Darcy?” Phil responded.

“Aye, aye, Daddy!” she answered, even as she jumped off the swing when it was in the forward swing, though not nearly as high as earlier.

He scooped her up into his arms and rested her on his, lack of, hip. As they headed to their city home, he saw the police blockade. He immediately pushed Darcy’s face into his shoulder as they walked.

He was going to go past it, not look, not be like one of the many gawkers come to stare, when something caught his eye.

His heart stopped and Darcy whimpered, responding to his own fear and horror and _please, no_ that flooded him, but it wasn’t meant to be.

The purse that Sarah had made for herself, laughing about becoming a purse maker instead of a psychiatrist, a one of a kind look, bloody as it was collected into an evidence bag, was enough to tell him what had happened.

He had wandered over and an officer was giving a disapproving glare when Coulson, because he was not Phil right now and he needed to shut down all emotion for awhile, stated, “That’s my wife’s purse. She made it herself.”

The look on the man’s face is enough to have Phil forgive him for the disapproving glare from earlier.

* * *

The funeral is closed casket.

No one needs to see the horrific aftermath of speeding car meets pedestrian.

Especially not Sarah’s daughter.

Phil doesn’t need to see it twice.

He’s dressed in black, Darcy trembling and hiccupping on his lap, confused and lost and he’s holding onto her tight, his four year old’s need for him to be her rock the only thing keeping him from falling into an ocean of despair.

He needs to be her shield against the swirling depression that is heavy on his own skin, and he’s just a normal human.

An average, ordinary, everyday, human with an Alpha Sensitive daughter.

He focuses on his love for his daughter, and how much he cares for her and clings to that just as tightly as she clings to his tie.

The wake, reception, whatever, after the funeral itself (they didn’t have one before) is mostly Phil sitting on the sofa with a lapful of sleeping Darcy and Peggy sitting next to him, rubbing soothing circles over his back and everyone, including the in-laws who hated him, expressing condolences.

He just clings to the thing that will carry him through, just as tightly as Darcy clings to his tie.

It is the tie that binds him to the present, the here and now.

There will be time enough later for sobbing until his chest aches.

Just not right now.

First, he needs to take care of Darcy.

And, once she’s safely tucked away into her room, then he can break down.

If just for the night.

…Right after he burns every black suit and black tie he owns, omitting this one tie.

Mostly because he doesn’t think he can pry it from her fingers.

But it doesn’t matter.

For right now, he answers on auto-pilot and holds Darcy and focuses on each moment instead of the day as a whole.

Because he doesn’t think he’ll make it otherwise.


End file.
